Comments on: Updated Google Schema Review Guidelines for Local Businesses

By: Mike Blumenthal

Mike Blumenthal — Wed, 02 Oct 2019 18:04:28 +0000

In reply to Brian.

1- There is no need to remove schema. Google didn’t say that they would no longer read or index local business and review schema. They said that they would no longer show stars for that schema. In fact, the way Google works, we think it behooves you to retain the schema. They clearly stated that the business needed to do nothing and would not be punished.

2- Google support should never be used as a source of truth, only as a source of problem solving. They are low level employees that don’t create policy and are frequently kept in the dark about actual policy.

3- Google made very clear that their action vis a vis review stars was to not show them in the search results. There would be no penalities or other implications if you kept them on your site. The exact same logic applies to a Google review.

By: Brian

Brian — Wed, 02 Oct 2019 17:56:26 +0000

Leave it to Google to continually confuse the business owner with their always ambiguous “guidelines”. Here’s my question that no one, including this site, seems to be able to answer definitively, at least with any supporting data. Forget about review stars, that’s easily remedied by removing the markup. But will posting a Google My Business review, in it’s entirety, on the business website be viewed negatively by Google. Why would it not be seen as self serving even without the review stars? I asked this question directly of GMB support and after first saying having the reviews on the site was a good thing, he seemed to change his tune when I showed him the Google post about the review snippet changes. He then tried to shift the interpretation on to the site owner, saying it was a technical issue. wtf?

By: Tim

Tim — Wed, 13 Sep 2017 21:24:57 +0000

Mike, so the implementation question remains: How to put the Individual Reviews on a Website and Get the Star Ratings?

With my understanding about all this I would believe the following Process to be correct and look for your opinion for my assumptions:

1. Get Customer Review Content.
2. Put Customer Review Content with Review Schema on a Location / Service Area Services Page.
3. Also add ALL Individual Reviews without Review Schema to a “Customer Reviews Webpage” and include the Aggregate Review Schema to this Webpage.

Questions that arise with this:

Is this close to a Best Practice for Gathering the Reviews for a Local Business, and then Aggregating them on one Webpage for the Website as a whole?

Does the Aggregation Schema go on my ALL Reviews Webpage OR in the Footer as MicroData (Which I would Prefer so the Customers can see the Review Stats.) OR in the JSON Schema Markup?

Where does Google want it to produce the Stars???
– If you Aggregate each Location Webpage Reviews on the Location Webpage, do you still add a Website “Total” Aggregation” in the “ALL Reviews Webpage” or the Footer or the JSON Script? OR will Google add the multiple Aggregations up for you???

I work with Service Provider Clients and this is important to get right… 🙂

Thanks!
Tim

By: Garrett Fleck

Garrett Fleck — Thu, 11 May 2017 22:47:30 +0000

Great Article! Reviews are just a small portion of the algo. All feedback is expected on a review platform as it gives an opportunity for the business owner to converse with the customer.

By: Brett Cairns

Brett Cairns — Sat, 11 Mar 2017 23:00:35 +0000

Good article Mike. Google used to wait until 5 reviews until the stars showed up but now they are appearing with only one review. Seems odd to see such a change

By: Nick Pelly

Nick Pelly — Mon, 12 Dec 2016 18:56:02 +0000

It is so easy for someone to give a bad review and not even give the business a chance to fix a situation that they may not even be aware of. Obviously everyone wants good reviews put up to help bring in more customers but are some of these reviews filtered so only the good ones show up?

By: Kim

Kim — Mon, 05 Dec 2016 13:49:05 +0000

In reply to Kim. any thoughts? :)

By: Mike Blumenthal

Mike Blumenthal — Thu, 06 Oct 2016 17:19:25 +0000

In reply to Mason Mitchell. @Mason Good question. I think that the owner needs to be abstracted from the process and there needs to be full disclosure of the situations when a review might be removed.

By: Mason Mitchell

Mason Mitchell — Thu, 06 Oct 2016 16:32:45 +0000

Good post. But how would they verify that a website is enabling all submitted evaluations to reveal? If you do not moderate reviews your website will be filled with spam.

By: Caleb Ross

Caleb Ross — Tue, 04 Oct 2016 18:54:57 +0000

Disregard my comment above. I found your updated blog post. My apologies.